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2000 AD’s bizarre fin-handed Compsognathus

October 2, 2012

Here’s a blast from the past:

This alleged Compsognathus is a card from the “Flesh” card-game that was printed across several progs (issues) of the comic 2000 AD in 1977. This one is from the back cover of Prog 9. (Click through the picture for the whole back cover.)

Compsognathus made another pop-culture appearance in The Lost World: Jurassic Park, of course, as the cute little “compys” that tear one of the nastier human characters to pieces.

Why does the 2000 AD Compsognathus have actinopterygian-like fins for arms? According to Wikipedia, The idea comes from Bidar et al. (1972), who supposed that the French specimen had webbed forefeet, which would look like flippers in life — an idea illustrated as part of a larger scene by Halstead (1975):

John Ostrom’s (1978) Compsognathus monograph showed that this was nonsense, but of course that was too late for the early issues of 2000 AD.

Update 1 (the next day)

In a comment below, Andrea Cau points to this post on his blog Theropoda (“the most inclusive blog containing Allosaurus fragilis but not Saltasaurus loricatus) which contains two more flippered-Compsognathus illustrations. Here they are: one from David Lambert’s book Dinosaur! …

… and one from David Norman’s Illustrated Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs.

Update 2 (two days later)

Silly me, I should of course have posted Bidar et al.’s (1972) own life restoration of Compsognathus. It’s not great art, but it’s … actually, I’m not sure what it is. But anyway, here it is:

IIRC the mention of C. corallestris‘ possible finnedness in Norman’s Illustrated Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs was just that – a mention, with him ending by saying that more recent studies indicated that it prob wasn’t the case.

It was a black and white pic on one of the “text” pages rather than one of the full-colour double-page spread di(n)oramas.

It should be noted that not only did Bidar make the argument, it is based on features of the mainslab which both he and Ostrom examined, and which Bidar illustrated in a reconstruction. The “fish-handed” idea is a development from Bidar’s original thesis, which was that the hand was embedded in a mosasaur-like “mitt” or “flipper.” The fish-fin is drawn more specifically from the idea of the structures discussed by Bidar as “rays,” when in fact Bidar assumed they were non-bony (I think; my copy of the paper was a hard one, and I no longer possess it).

The ‘flippered Compsognathus‘ paper is Bidar, Demay and Thomel (not just Bidar), and it does indeed include no less than four life reconstructions of flippered compsognathids (in addition to a skeletal reconstruction as well). There are several additional flippered compsognathid reconstructions elsewhere in the popular literature. Following Caselli’s lead, they are often greenish or bluish.

The Bidar reconstruction and most that copy it look like the elbow is bending the wrong way (or the manus attaches directly to the humerus). Why would they draw it like that? At least Sibbick’s looks slightly more like a theropod forelimb.

Very interesting — tuns out Matthew is right that in Crichton’s novels, the “compys” are Procompsognathus; but in the film, as noted above, they have been promoted to Compsognathus. Never noticed that before.

That I recall, the paleontologist in the film, “Robert Burke” (the not-so-subtle Robert Bakker who gets eaten by the T. rex), calls them Procompsognathus triassicus in one of the scenes in the film (same scene where the jerk character zaps the “compy” with a stun gun, therefore guaranteeing his karmic death at their hands, er teeth).